Then she set out for the town and sought out Albert, who was still in bed sleeping restlessly. Lotty looked at him long and severely. Her gaze was so savage that a feeling of fear shot through him and woke him. He started up.
"What is it?" he cried aghast.
Lotty handed him the paper without speaking a word, and before he had unfolded it she had gone.
He threw on his clothes and hurried after her, but he could not find her. He ran about all day: he hovered round the castle, he chased through the park. He looked as though the Furies pursued him. At last he went home, sat down to his desk, and began to turn over a pile of dirty papers. Great drops stood on his brow. In the evening he went to see a friend, and gambled the whole night. In a short time he had won large sums, but then a few days after he lost them all again, those and much more besides. One morning he tottered into his room, loaded a pistol and shot himself.
Lotty got home unnoticed as she had gone out; but as she entered Sorrow stood in front of her, and her eyes were so terrible that Lotty fell down before her on the earth and covered her face with her hands. But when Sorrow began to speak, Lotty was seized with trembling at the stern words that fell upon her like hammer blows; she writhed on the ground like a worm, but Sorrow was inexorable.
"You have done your work well," she said; "you have avenged yourself. But on whom? On those who have done you kindness from the first hour when they raised you out of misery and wretchedness, those to whom you owe all—your life, your health—who have treated you as a child and a sister. They were happy before I brought them to your house, and what are they now? I know you want to throw yourself into the water, but I will not suffer it, for you need a whole long life to make good the thoughts that have poisoned your youth. You must give up your whole strength to poor Cara, beside whose bed you will yet often see me, and take care that you need not tremble before my face, as you must to-day. Cara needs you, for her parents are broken down, and only through boundless self-sacrifice may you dare to hope for forgiveness. As yet I cannot accord it."
Once more it was Christmas Eve. A beautiful tree was alight in the little house. Lotty had brought it there in Cara's name. The children had red cheeks and shouted joyously. The mother too had grown to look younger and smiled often. Only Lotty was pale as death and dark as remorse.
"Here my mother looks at me," she thought; "and thinks Lotty has grown bad; and there Doris's mother looks at me and thinks, 'Had you but called me we could have saved the child.' Oh that I had starved to death!"
In the castle a shaded lamp burnt beside Cara's bed. Her father was reading to her with weary voice, the mother sat by, stroked the girl's hands, and dried the heavy, slow-falling tears that rolled down her child's face with a soft handkerchief. Cara had not spoken all the evening. Only once she asked—